Joseph, trapped on this side of the gulf,
for holiness unfolds beyond you,
now affirm what you cannot know,
say yes and go silent;
stand by faithfully.

Mary, trapped on the far side of the gulf,
for holiness grows within you,
now trust what no one but you can know,
say yes and sing your song;
open yourself faithfully.

Others will not know
and claim loudly to know, and judge,
and you will smile silently,
tip your head slightly to the side
and carry on and not abandon your Beloved.

So, bewildered, we find ourselves enfolded
in the blessed mystery of grace promised,
outrageous belief that in our pains and labors,
in our unknowing, in the cells of our loneliness,
something magnificent unfolds in us without us.
Knowing only how we believe and not what,
without turning back,
we lay ourselves in God’s dark hands.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

A thin skin of ice on the pond
comes and goes, an eye opening and closing.
Soon it will tire and stay closed.
The cattails rattle along the shore,
the red twig dogwood has nothing to say.
Sedges have bowed their heads
for the long prayer service.
There is no fear here.
Little creatures, and some great ones, have gone in.
The oaks hold their secrets tightly.
The last geese row, patient, across the pond of sky.
They know where they’re going.
The squirrels trust their hoards,
the nuthatches, the finches know
where to find things,
the chickadees know their songs.

I believe we can learn to trust
what is to come,
and what will come after that.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

The lift and drop of the headlines.
The drift of nations in and out of sanity.
The world stumbling toward its fate.
I will be there.

The school,
and the streets between your house and the school,
and the child who walks there.
I will be with you.

The argument,
the deep gnawing fear for a relationship on edge,
the brown weight of guilt.
Beloved, I will be near.

The waiting room,
the moment in the car before you go in,
and the child sleeping in her crib.
Yes, I will be there.

The soup, simmering,
and the wooden spoon beside the soup,
and the sock drawer.
I will be with you.

There will be the starry night,
and there will be all the others;
the light from the stable,
and all the stables with no miracles,
the days without end:
yes, always,
I will be with you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           They shall know that I am YHWH their God,
           who brought them out of the land of Egypt
           that I might dwell among them;
           I am the Holy One their God.
                           —Exodus 29.46

           “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
           and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
           which means, “God is with us.”
                           —Matthew 1.23

We like to say Jesus “came down from heaven”
to show us how much God cares.
But Jesus did not “come from away.”
God doesn’t live in heaven.
Ever since the Exodus God has lived among God’s people.
Christ’s advent is not so much an arrival as an emergence,
the divine glory hidden in our midst suddenly visible,
our unity in love exposed by one who is one with us,
God’s compassion secreted away in our hearts
breaking out into the open.
This is the revelation that comes to us so often late,
after the dusty journey, on our way out of the hospital,
on the other side of the treacherous bridge,
at the victory party and yes, the funeral:
that God was with us all along.
This is not news; yet we are just now opening our eyes.
The Beloved is always drawing near
and we are always, always waking up.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           God, you have shown strength with your arm;
                      you have scattered the proud
                      in the thoughts of their hearts.
           You have brought down the powerful from their thrones,
                      and lifted up the lowly.
                                      ——Luke 1.51-52

Oh, Mary, you know perfectly well
how revolutionary this is,
how the power structures fight this,
how the world is opposed to God.
And you know in the fight
you will lose much.
Give me courage, Mother of Love,
to stand against the powers,
that they might be brought down,
to use what I have to lift the lowly,
to find my strength not in my powers
but in your love
that brings us all into one circle,
all your Beloved.
Mary, may your vision be my hope
and my courage.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           Be patient, therefore, friends, until the coming of the Beloved.
          The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth,
          being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
                           —James 5.7

           I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,
           believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
                           —Mark 11.24

Remember this: the Israelites celebrated Passover before they left Egypt.
The Psalms praise God for mercy before it is granted.

Faith is the paradox of the future perfect tense:
God’s will shall have been done.
The future is packaged into the present.

Therefore, beloved, be patient with what you long for.
God is with you even when you don’t know,
working even when you can’t see.
Present in a way that is unfolding.

Remember this when night is thick,
when prayer is empty, or faith is dry.
nothing happening, like winter,
its invisible seeds and roots.
God is here.

God is not “coming.”
It is I who am sinking deeper toward God.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           The desert shall rejoice and blossom.
                           —Isaiah 35.1

Earth knows.
We have put her to hard labor,
taking her jewels, stripping her naked,
enslaving her under our callous appetite.
She mourns in drought, swoons with fever,
drops her glaciers like glass fallen and shattered.

She too is on this faltering journey toward the Promise.
She too longs for vision long denied.
Yet she will not withhold. She will provide.
For she too is Word made flesh.
In the joy of her Maker,
exultant in the presence of the Great Love,
she will flourish, as grace does.
Already the pines reach down, strong and confident,
the beetle priests enter their secret sanctuary,
every pilgrim bird, every angel fungus
loves their song of glory and is ready to burst forth.
Even deserts that have never known luxury
wait, debutantes, ready, unafraid.
No one has more hope than earth herself.
She will love us through this.

_______________
Weather Report

A perfect day,
perhaps not today or tomorrow
but in Earth’s time, soon.
Ample sun and rain,
the breeze of Love breathing its joy,
and every species
giving and receiving.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?
           A reed shaken by the wind?
           Someone dressed in soft robes?
                           —Matthew 11.7, 8

The truth will not likely come to us
dressed in fancy stuff. Beware of the voices
trying to protect the privilege of the privileged.
Beware of the voices easily offended at words
despite the offense of injustice all about them.
Expect truth in a hard shell, a harsh rebuke
to our worship of comfort at the expense of compassion.
“You have scattered the proud, brought down the mighty,
and lifted up the lowly.”

The truth is hard that asks for our hearts and lives.
Where to begin? First, before you go off
to crusade against the powerful, look within.
What are the lowly voices in you that need lifting,
that need protecting from haughty judgments?
What little child in you
would God wrap in God’s own soft robes?
What hierarchies strut in their finery in your head,
the powers that arrogantly measure your worth
in defiance of the perfect love of God,
and of God’s complete blessing?
The harsh words of the prophet strike first
at your own self-denigrating beliefs.
Once you have pulled them down from their thrones
you can help others do the same.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

           “Go and tell John what you hear and see:
           the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
           the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear,
           the dead are raised,
           and the poor have good news brought to them.”
                           —Matthew 11.4-5

We string up lights of joy at your coming.
We light candles for justice. We sing songs of hope.
But today I utter a prayer for healing.
I have been wounded. We all have been wounded,
in our bodies and in our hearts we have been broken
and we are not yet whole.
I am in need of mending, in need of forgiveness.
I am poor in spirit, weary of soul;
sometimes I don’t have what it takes.
My open wound is your empty manger.
With a broken heart I welcome you.
Come, beloved healer, come.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

She lives a beckoning.
Her hands beseech
in drawing water, pounding grain.

An invitation dwells within
the practiced grace of tending to the elders,
the invocations and priestly gestures
of washing pots, of cooking soup,
the welcome of a small dirt floor made clean.

She lays her eyes like hands on things
and consecrates them: cups and stones,
and children, and their tears;
her noticing, her calling to the holy.
She knows no saintliness beyond the plain
embrace of all that is, the feel of walking,
the sacredness of how we’re given, pure,
so confidently to each other here.

She does not question the roughness of her life,
but uses it to scrub her wisdom’s tabletop;
and yet with every breath she begs a question.
Her undemanding silence is a bidding,
her simply being, her vocation here:
to make intimate spaces for eternity to dwell.

The great round pot sits, washed and empty.
And there, beside the broom, as yet unseen,
dear Gabriel smiles at her and draws a breath.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net